ChatGPT’s upgraded Voice Mode is being delayed

Ben Schoon | Jun 25 2024 - 4:25 pm PT

After being announced in May, OpenAI has confirmed that the upgraded Voice Mode in ChatGPT is being delayed.

The most impressive of OpenAI’s demo of GPT-4o, which stole some of the thunder of Google’s AI-focused I/O presentation a day later, was the upgraded Voice Mode. The conversational Voice Mode allowed for fast responses and extremely natural interactions.

But, now, it’s being delayed a bit.

OpenAI says in a post on Twitter/X that the upgraded Voice Mode will be delayed by at least a month. That’s just for the “small” alpha group of ChatGPT Plus subscribers that were supposed to gain access to the upgrade by the end of this month.

The full release of ChatGPT’s “advanced” Voice Mode will be available towards the Fall, OpenAI says.

We’re sharing an update on the advanced Voice Mode we demoed during our Spring Update, which we remain very excited about:

We had planned to start rolling this out in alpha to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but need one more month to reach our bar to launch. For example, we’re improving the model’s ability to detect and refuse certain content. We’re also working on improving the user experience and preparing our infrastructure to scale to millions while maintaining real-time responses.

As part of our iterative deployment strategy, we’ll start the alpha with a small group of users to gather feedback and expand based on what we learn. We are planning for all Plus users to have access in the fall. Exact timelines depend on meeting our high safety and reliability bar. We are also working on rolling out the new video and screen sharing capabilities we demoed separately, and will keep you posted on that timeline.

ChatGPT’s advanced Voice Mode can understand and respond with emotions and non-verbal cues, moving us closer to real-time, natural conversations with AI. Our mission is to bring these new experiences to you thoughtfully.

OpenAI didn’t address whether or not the “Sky” voice will be returning with this upgrade after it was removed last month. OpenAI disabled the voice due to it sounding too much like Scarlett Johansson after the actress refused to lend her voice to ChatGPT.

Meanwhile, though, ChatGPT’s new Mac app is now widely available to all users.